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Carson-Newman University remembers its former First Lady Brona Maddox

USA TODAY Network - Tennessee
Published 2:12 p.m. ET March 19, 2018

In a photo taken in the early 1990s, Brona Maddox and Carson-Newman President Dr. Cordell Maddox stand in front of what was then The President's Home on Laurel Hills Circle in Jefferson City.(Photo: Submitted/ Carson-Newman University.)

Carson-Newman University is mourning the loss of its former First Lady, Brona Maddox, who passed away March 7, according to an announcement from the university Monday.

Maddox was 84, according to her obituary in the Knoxville News Sentinel.

She served as the university's First Lady from 1977 to 1999, working alongside her husband, Carson-Newman's 20th President J. Cordell Maddox.

"Mrs. Brona Maddox was the longest serving First Lady in Carson-Newman history," said Carson-Newman President J. Randall O'Brien in a news release. "For 23 years she served faithfully and elegantly alongside President Maddox, sharing the joys and challenges with grace and beauty. We loved her dearly and we will miss her."

While at Carson-Newman, the North Carolina native helped foster a sense of community through her involvement with The Faculty Women's Club and helping to establish Les Amies, an organization consisting of women of the surrounding community and women of the campus community.

In 2000, the group renamed the organization's scholarship in her honor as The Brona Maddox Les Amies Scholarship Fund.

"Our deepest sympathies go out to the Maddox family," said current Carson-Newman First Lady Kay O'Brien. "I will always remember Brona’s warm welcome to me and her supportive presence when we began our work at Carson-Newman. Her memory and influence will forever be significant as students are blessed with the Brona Maddox Les Amies Scholarship Fund."

Maddox had a degree in music and theater from Furman University and taught music for many years at Jefferson City and Talbott Elementary schools, according to her obituary.

She met her husband while she was a student at Furman and the pair married in March 1957.

They were married for 62 years and had four children together, Jesse Cordell Maddox Jr.; Michael Gary Maddox; William Brian Maddox; and Brona Gayle Beaudet.

In 1977 the couple decided to leave South Carolina's Anderson College where J. Cordell Maddox was serving as president to take the helm of what was then Carson-Newman College, according to the release.

"I couldn't figure out why - if he wasn't interested in another job - he kept visiting that college across the mountain," Maddox would later recall in a 1999 interview upon her husband's retirement.

Once they arrived on the banks of Mossy Creek, though, she said it didn't take long for both of them to realize they absolutely loved their surroundings.

"We were happy at Anderson," she said. "But this was a move we felt God wanted us to take."